Vacationblogging 2006, part 3

As I sit here in the lobby of the Holiday Inn in rainy Bangor, Maine, I get the vague sense that this town has something to do with Paul Bunyan.

Anyhoo, the Maine section of our trip has finally come to a close. The good: Jim has finally decided to enjoy himself on this vacation. The bad: he’s taken to mugging for the camera:

The weather could have been a bit better, but all in all, we couldn’t have asked for much more. On Thursday we visited one of the few notable locations on the island, the home of Saturn Press. Don’t look for their web site, they don’t have one (I did, however, find this fan site). They actually don’t even own a computer — all of their designs are hand made and printed on one of four vintage letterpress printers (“What do you do for parts?” we asked. “They don’t break” was the reply. They better not!).

On Friday, it rained all morning (especially during my run), but was beautiful by afternoon, allowing the entire group a chance to head down to the sandy beach and have a fabulous time playing in the chilly waves.

Yesterday was our last day on Swans Island, and we had to get up early to catch the ferry. If you don’t make a reservation for one of the four available slots, you have to wait in the standby line, hoping to get one of the 12 remaining places. We were 17th in the standby line, so we missed the 8:15 ferry but caught the 9:45. Good thing. The next boat didn’t leave until 1:00.

Saturday was foggy but warm in Acadia. We decided to do the famous “Beehive” hike — 500 feet, straight up. Too bad it was foggy, because there was no view to speak of. I did manage to capture some of the verticality of the place, though (notice Jim’s still mugging):

It just gets steeper after that. Greta likes to hang out on the uphill side of the path:

This is a popular trail. While most people seem to relish the “hanging off the edge of the world” sensation of climbing this cliff, some people panic. One woman, who had walked up the relatively flat backside, panicked about 100 feet down the cliff-face trail, and had to convince her group to turn around. Like me, everyone was stopping every 30 seconds to take pictures:

When we made it to the top, we were completely embedded in a fogbank. At least there was a nice breeze to cool our sweaty bodies. Jim was still mugging:

(Cannon School, even though Jim is looking like he might make a good tight end, has no football team. Click here for a close-up of the t-shirt.)